Listen to the Higgs Boson in Musical Form

Happy birthday, CERN! For its 60th anniversary, CERN scientists played a piece composed from a musical translation of data from the Higgs boson experiments with the Large Hadron Collider.

[Credit: CERN]

The piece, which includes several different instruments, is played by seven engineers and physicists, and is overlaid in the video with specific data that corresponds with the music.

From CERN: "The musical scores are based on the sonification of data obtained by four detectors -ALICE,ATLAS, CMS and LHCb -during the Large Hadron Collider run 2010-2013. The video(link is external) shows each musical piece performed individually and as an ensemble by CERN's very own researchers; the music was played in the four experimental caverns and in the CERN Control Centre (CCC) and features a harp, a guitar, two violins, a keyboard, a clarinet and a flute."

And serendipitously enough, the piece itself is lovely. If you ever happened to imagine what the Higgs boson would sound like, it would probably sound something like this.